Essays on the XXIst century workplace. Towards a Polarised Spatial Division of Labour and its consequences

Building on four self-contained yet interrelated essays, this dissertation develops one central argument: the contemporary transformations of work have not only intensified employment polarisation but have at the same time reshaped its geographies at several scales, concentrating value, externalising costs and fragmenting the social spaces of work. To empirically back this statement, the PhD research examines how transformations in the organisation and spatial distribution of workplaces in France and Italy shape economic, social, environmental and political inequalities, focusing on their spatial dimensions. Drawing on economic geography, economic sociology and spatial political economy, this dissertation revisits Doreen Massey’s concept of the Spatial Divisions of Labour (1984) and advances three main contributions. Theoretically, it introduces the Polarised Spatial Division of Labour (PSDL), arguing that contemporary spatial inequalities are not simply the outcome of differences in regional endowments, but the active and self-reinforcing result of hierarchical relations between workplaces, firms and regions, operating simultaneously across economic, workplace-level and environmental dimensions of value. It shows how current socio-economic transformations and changes in production processes reinforce these hierarchies, producing increasingly unequal geographies across scales. It further applies this framework to phenomena traditionally approached from an a-spatial standpoint, such as workplace health, environmental inequalities and workplace segregation. Empirically, it documents these dynamics across four original studies conducted in France and Italy. Methodologically, it combines this critical and relational perspective with quantitative causal identification strategies. The empirical chapters collectively identify and illustrate this process, reinforcing the overarching argument and revealing the multifaceted implications of spatial polarisation in advanced capitalist economies. Several interrelated and mutually reinforcing mechanisms emerge: the consolidation of the metropolitan advantage, the spatial polarisation of environmental cost-bearing, the fragmentation of workplaces and the growing polarisation of political behaviours. The first chapter investigates the health impacts of robotisation in Italian industries. While automation generates short-term physical health benefits, it is associated with rising mental health issues. The analysis reveals a distinctly uneven geography created by a metropolitan advantage: large metropolitan areas experience greater reductions in workplace accidents and lower prevalence of mental health problems compared to other provinces, thereby accentuating Italy’s persistent regional well-being disparities. Building on this, the second chapter analyses Amazon’s logistics expansion in Italy to uncover the drivers of facility location and the spatial distribution of its environmental and social externalities. The findings demonstrate how Amazon’s location strategies reproduce and reinforce existing socio-spatial inequalities, concentrating environmental costs in vulnerable municipalities burdened by structural governance and economic issues without meaningful local development or welfare gains. This chapter shows how global logistics actors actively reshape local labour geographies, deepening spatial inequalities and questioning the sustainability of development trajectories centred on logistics-led development. The third chapter turns to a new and understudied dimension of polarisation. Drawing on recent evidence of rising workplace segregation across advanced capitalist economies, it examines the phenomenon through a geographical lens using French administrative data (BTS-DADS). By analysing segregation at the scale of local labour systems, the chapter introduces a within-region perspective of inequalities that reveals how the dynamics of workplace segregation (declining intergroup exposure and growing top-earner isolation) play out very differently across cities and metropolitan areas. These findings introduce a crucial spatial lens to the understanding of this process with large implications for social integration, mobility, networks and inequalities, opening to further research avenues. Finally, the fourth chapter explores the socio-political consequences of spatial polarisation through the lens of green transition policies. Using Italy as a case study, it reveals how the concentration of the knowledge economy in hubs widens territorial inequalities while reshaping patterns of environmental activism. Contrary to expectations, the analysis finds that knowledge-intensive hubs exhibit reduced pro-environmental activism (nearly twice as much as reductions in anti-environmental activism), suggesting that affluent, educated populations in these areas are less engaged in collective societal issues. Taken together, these empirical and conceptual contributions delineate the contours of the Polarised Spatial Division of Labour which restructures territorial hierarchies, allocates costs and benefits asymmetrically across space, and reshapes patterns of social and political participation. They demonstrate how economic and organisational transformations intersect with the socio-political foundations of contemporary capitalism, generating new forms of spatial inequality. By applying a spatial lens to debates on the future of work, social cohesion and inequality in advanced capitalist economies, the dissertation provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how polarisation is reshaping both the geography and the social and economic consequences of work in the twenty-first century.